Pandemic Darlings The pandemic economy, in original documents
Home Profiles Leland Fishback

Profiles · Defendants

ProfilePerson

Leland Fishback

Defendant

ERC
Type
Person
Role
Defendant
Programs
ERC
Updated

The profile

A St. George, Utah businessman who filed 22 false payroll returns for four of his own businesses, including one called Circle CPA, and collected $482,058.46 in Employee Retention Credits, plus PPP, EIDL and Nevada unemployment money. He was sentenced in May 2024 to 29 months.

Identity and role

Bradford Leland Fishback, 40 at sentencing, of St. George, Utah, was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Utah after an investigation by IRS Criminal Investigation and the FBI's Salt Lake City field office. The four businesses in the case were Circle CPA, Fishback Tax, Snowflake Shavery and World Horizons Outreach.

The scheme and pandemic-relief role

From 2020 to 2022, according to his admissions at the change-of-plea hearing as the office described them, Fishback filed 22 Forms 941 with the IRS for his four businesses claiming the Employee Retention Credit (ERC), and received $482,058.46. He also filed at least seven PPP applications that got $77,629, at least five EIDL applications that got $137,573, and false claims for unemployment benefits in Nevada that got $45,831. His statements about employee counts, wages, gross receipts and profit and loss were false.

The office puts the totals at $903,882.88 claimed and $685,845.05 received. The four amounts it lists add to $743,091.46, about $57,000 more than that total; the release does not explain the difference. Either way, the ERC was the largest single source, about two-thirds of what the listed programs paid.

  • Pleaded guilty: September 2023, to wire fraud, money laundering and false claims.
  • Sentenced: May 14, 2024, by Chief U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby to 29 months in prison and three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $685,845.05 in restitution.

Where they are now (2025–2026)

The May 2024 sentence is the last public record of Fishback we found. The same federal court tried the only ERC case in the Justice Department's releases to end in acquittal, that of Zachary Bassett and a Provo tax-preparation firm.

Sources

Back to top